Game Alive: A Science Fiction Adventure Novel (7 page)

Jake did not feel so much like chatting with anyone today. Mostly he wanted to be alone, so he set his steps away from the castle and crossed the drawbridge. The big roan stallion Jake had named Windrunner was waiting patiently in front of the stable, always ready for him. Mounting, Jake nudged the horse to a trot and then to a gallop, clattering up the cobbled road as fast as Windrunner could fly.

He rode for a long time, feeling Xaloria rush past him but paying the scenery little attention. He had soon left Lord Ryden’s castle and everything in it far behind. His horse’s shoes rang against the stones, the sound echoing in the trees and from farmhouses scattered in the distance behind their fields. The wind whipped across his hot face, never quite cooling his fever. His thin brown hair was blown back, and slowly his white-knuckled fists unclenched about the reins and he relaxed.

Windrunner began at last to tire, and Jake was forced to allow his mount to slow to a gentle canter. He reined the horse in, and they paused at the edge of the road surrounded by overarching trees. Jake gazed off into the distance, focusing on nothing. How good it would feel, just to ride away! To live the rest of his life in Xaloria, never having to go back to Leiner Hills with its identical houses and his mean-spirited classmates and Gerald and his mother…Jake pushed the shockingly bleak thought away with a shudder, and turned Windrunner back toward the keep. Des had surely logged in by now, was probably waiting for him and wondering where Jake was.

Approaching the castle, Jake smiled to see two figures waving to him from the drawbridge. As he had thought, Des was waiting for him. But it was the billowing-robed, golden-haired young woman at his side that raised Jake’s spirits.

“Kari!” he shouted when he was near. At the edge of the drawbridge, Jake threw himself down from his mount and ran out over the rough, water-stained wooden planks to greet his friends. He stopped himself just short of grabbing Kari up in a tight, relieved embrace.

“Hey,” Kari said. There was no annoyance in her voice, and if she thought Jake was acting strangely she gave no sign of that either. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“I went for a little ride,” Jake explained. He suddenly felt sheepish over his desire to keep riding, never turning back. Thoughts about his mother and Gerald, and what their “special dinner” was sure to mean for him, had made him forget that there were good things in his life as well. Like his friends.

“I must have missed you,” Kari said, then went on to explain. “Lord Ryden identified my Slippers of Quick Travel. I’ve been hopping from place to place trying to spot you. But you’re here now. Look what else Lord Ryden identified.” Kari held up the sapphire-tipped staff she had claimed in the subterranean lair of the giant ants. “A Rain-Caller’s Staff. Perfect for an elemental sorceress like me, don’t you think?”

Kari had tossed back her head, and she held the staff aloft in a dramatic pose. She spoiled the act by giggling.

“I take it you’re feeling better?” asked Jake.

“Yes, I’m fine.” Kari stopped laughing and she dropped her eyes away from him. Jake thought he saw tiny spots of color forming in her cheeks, but he might have imagined it. “Sorry about wearing my grouchy-pants,” she apologized with a shrug.

“It’s okay,” Jake said at once. Des nodded his agreement. A thought struck Jake then. “Say, Kari,” he asked, “did you have any trouble with your login today?”

“Not really,” said Kari slowly. Jake gave her a puzzled look. “Well, it was still weird. Remember I told you about that stretchy, pulling sensation? That was still there, but the system let me right in so I guess you fixed it.”

“Huh.” Jake scratched his head, wondering what could have been causing the physical effect Kari had described. He decided it had to be something on her end. “Did your dad recalibrate your VR room yet?”

“No, he’s been too busy. He promised me he’d get to it this weekend.” Kari rolled her eyes, letting them know what she thought of that promise. She shrugged it off, though, her excitement shining through again. “Anyway, do we still have time to get into that rescue mission?”

“Yeah, sure,” Jake told her, satisfied that the problem hadn’t been with Xaloria. “We should have plenty of time.”

The trio turned to head back to the stable and claim their horses, but just then an armored guardsman came rushing out from the castle gate.

“Sir Xend! Lady Alista, Mister Hand!”

“Mr. Hand,” Kari snickered, and Des shot her a dark look.

“Sir Xend!” The guardsman had reached them now, and stood breathlessly saluting Jake. “Lord Ryden sends for you most urgently, noble sirs, my lady. He is in need of your help.”

“Another quest,” Kari spoke in an aside to Des, who shrugged. “We sure stay busy in Xaloria.”

Jake told the guardsman to lead the way, and they followed the man across the bridge. Once inside the gates, they crossed the broad courtyard of the keep. Off in one corner, guardsmen sparred with each other using wooden practice swords. On the other side of the yard was a cramped archery course where more men were at practice. The central courtyard was a rough circle of bare, beaten earth. Six men in light armor grappled in the midst of that circle now, honing their unarmed combat skills. Myrrordom Keep was no pleasure palace with endless, frilly gardens and still pools of water for reflecting. Even so, Jake had never seen so much activity in the yard. It was as if Lord Ryden was preparing for a war.

The guardsman led them into the keep’s main hall, where Lord Ryden awaited. The young wizard had been pacing, but stopped still when he heard them enter and spun around to face them. He wasted no time dismissing the guard, striding up to Jake with a haste that was impossible to miss.

“I am glad you remained nearby,” the young man said without greeting. Ryden’s dark eyes were wide and plaintive, and his lower lip trembled slightly. Jake frowned. What could possibly be bothering the wizard so? “Something is terribly wrong.”

“What is it? What do you mean?” asked Jake, wondering if this really was just another quest or if something were, in fact, terribly wrong.

“Come and see.” Lord Ryden moved quickly to a tall, arched window in a nearby stone wall. He took hold of Jake’s hand, pulling the knight along with him. Des and Kari followed, both of them unconcerned. Ryden lifted one slender arm to point through the open window. “Do you see that mountain?”

A long peak rose in the distance, far beyond the walls of Myrrordom Keep. Jake squinted and guessed it was several miles away. Craggy stone void of trees or other greenery, the mountain stabbed jaggedly into clouds that seemed to circle about its zenith as if held there by some magnetic force. Lightning flickered dimly, hidden inside those thick clouds. The thunder, if it came, was too far off to be heard here in the Keep.

“I see it,” Jake told Ryden. “What of it?”

“I see it as well,” said Ryden, and he sounded frightened.

“So what?” asked Des impatiently, unaware that anything was wrong. “It’s a mountain.”

“It is a mountain,” confirmed Ryden, turning briefly from the window. “But how did it get there?”

Jake looked at the young wizard sharply. “It hasn’t always been there?”

“No. It arrived this morning,” said the wizard.
That’s a funny way of putting it,
thought Jake.
The mountain had
arrived?

“That’s crazy. Mountains don’t just pop up out of nowhere,” scoffed Kari. She paused, turning to Jake. “Right?”

Jake stared through the window at the purplish, craggy peak rearing over the horizon. He thought furiously, trying to figure it out. A nagging idea tickled his memory, something he had been worried about not long ago…

When Jake did not respond, Lord Ryden continued. “There is no magic in Xaloria so powerful. No one – no
thing
– should be able to create something of that magnitude from nothing.” The wizard was anxious, wringing his hands together in front the rich, green robes draping his chest.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Des, and then his face lit up. “Wait, like a god or something?”

Lord Ryden did not answer, speaking instead to Jake. “Sir Xend, you recall I spoke to you of a power from beyond Xaloria, a power attempting to force its way into our realm?”

Jake nodded; he remembered. But what did it mean?

“I’ll just go have a look,” suggested Kari. “Maybe it’s just an illusion.” Before anyone could talk her out of it, Kari clicked her magical Slippers of Quick Travel and vanished from the room.

Des crossed his arms and turned his eyes to Jake. “What do you think, mastermind? Where’d this magic mountain come from?”

The pieces finally clicked together in Jake’s mind, and he snapped his fingers in realization. “Pause Xaloria,” he snapped. Immediately, the entire world froze. The sounds from the courtyard – the thwacking of wooden swords and thrumming of released bowstrings – broke off, leaving Jake and Des in silence. Beside Jake, Lord Ryden’s mouth hung open in the moment of speaking, a reply frozen on his motionless lips. Des blinked in surprise.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Launch AI Preferences,” commanded Jake, ignoring Des for the moment as the familiar control window shimmered into existence before him. “Display fault recognition.”

The screen changed. It now read: Fault Recognition: OFF

Jake stared at the screen in confusion. “That can’t be right,” he said quietly.

“What is it? What does that mean?” asked Des.

“It means that the NPCs shouldn’t recognize problems with the environment,” Jake explained. “Lord Ryden shouldn’t care about the mountain. He shouldn’t even be aware of it as an anomaly. Even if the mountain just sprang up ten minutes ago, as far as Ryden should know it’s always been there.”

Jake paused, thinking back. Now he realized what had been bothering him the last few days, that vague but nagging worry in the back of his mind. “It was the same in Everheart, when Mirabel told us the dread wolves shouldn’t be in the area. They shouldn’t have been, but she really shouldn’t have known that.”

“Maybe it’s part of the quest,” said Des. “You heard Ryden. Powerful force from beyond the realm and all that. Dark gods, evil and forgotten, trying to push their way into the world. And when they do, things start changing. The dread wolves spread out, mountains appear where they shouldn’t be. Next thing you know, the weather will turn ugly and crops will be dying. They’re noticing things are wrong because that’s what we have to stop in this quest. Typical RPG stuff, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think so.” Jake thought about it a second longer. For someone who said he didn’t like role-playing games, Des certainly knew a lot about them. But he was still wrong. “No,” Jake said with greater certainty this time. “The way Ryden’s behaving…it’s how the NPCs act when something’s wrong in the program: confused and frightened. That’s why I turned off the fault recognition in the first place – so they wouldn’t act all crazy while I was building the environment.”

“I’d say that counts as building the environment,” said Des, pointing to the distant mountain. Then he looked at the display screen, which still showed the message Fault Recognition: OFF. “Oh. Right. Plus, I’m assuming you didn’t put the mountain there. Jake…is Xaloria broken?”

“I don’t know,” Jake answered truthfully. “But something is definitely overriding this setting. Otherwise, Ryden wouldn’t have noticed a thing. The environment should be stable by now, too. It’s not like the compiler’s running. I’ve turned it on a couple times since we started playing to fix little things, but I always turn it off before we log in. So there shouldn’t be any changes unless I make them myself, with the game paused.”

“Okay,” said Des, nodding his head slowly. “I get it. So, what – do you need to shut the game down?”

Jake considered for a long moment before reaching a decision. “No, I don’t think so. I’ll definitely have to check it out later, but it should be okay to play for now. And there might be something to your theory, besides. Maybe playing through the quest – if it is a quest – is the best way to get answers. Resume Xaloria.”

Instantly, the world around them reanimated. Kari appeared, standing where she had been before with a puzzled expression. Lord Ryden, who had been about to speak when Jake paused the game, snapped his mouth shut in surprise at seeing her there. He peered at her strangely, almost as if he had forgotten her Slippers of Quick Travel.

“Did you pause the game or something?” asked Kari irritably. “When I clicked my heels to come back here, there was this weird lag.”

Ryden’s eyes widened in alarm, though he could not possibly understand what she was talking about. Jake waved for Kari to be quiet in front of the NPC. Des took her aside to explain while Jake reassured Lord Ryden. “We’ll find out what’s going on,” he promised the wizard. “You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Ryden smiled uneasily.

The next morning, Jake looked thoughtfully at Kari’s locker as he updated his Visi-Classroom. She had not turned up at school again today. She’d seemed fine last night in the VR program. Maybe she should have stayed in bed instead of playing in the game? But she hadn’t said anything about feeling ill when they saw her, and Kari was usually quick to relate all the nasty details when she was sick. It didn’t make sense.

A man’s voice startled Jake from his worried pondering.

“Good morning, Jake,” said Principal Edward. Jake had not noticed the slightly paunchy, middle-aged man approaching him in the hall. The principal ran his hand back through gray-streaked black hair, his forehead creasing with worry. “Will you please come with me to my office?”

Jake stared up at Principal Edward, shocked. He’d never been called to the principal’s office in his life, not for anything. Mr. Edward was already turning away, walking purposefully toward the administration area. Jake trailed along behind, running everything that had occurred over the last few days through his mind. School had been completely normal; he had no idea what he’d done wrong.

His stomach had tied itself into a tight knot by the time Mr. Edward led him through the door to the principal’s small, private office. It got worse when Jake saw the police officer standing near the bookcase on the far side of the room. Kari’s mother and father sat in the uncomfortable plastic chairs in front of Mr. Edward’s desk, and there was another man wearing a suit standing behind them. The man in the suit was balding, wore round spectacles, and was holding a digital notebook in one hand.